Valentine's Day, Part 3

(Mommy and Daddy celebrated Valentine's Day last night, which I'll tell about later.)
This morning, Mommy surprised me with my own celebration!  After I got out of bed to play with my treehouse and share some roars with the dinosaurs, I got to go on a treasure hunt!  Ms. Alicia from Moms Time Out had set up clues and treats for all the mommies to use with their kids, and boy, was I glad.  I kept telling Mommy, "This is a fun, fun, treasure hunt!"  Here are some of the places I found treasures when I followed the clues:

The freezer.  (Yes, it's still a little empty.  Mommy's working on that.)

The bathtub.

The playroom.

The TV.

The phone.

After our fun treasure hunt, Mommy showed me this placemat she made for me that tells me how special I am.  I sure loved having Mommy read it to me.  

Mommy was most excited about the AIMS math activities that Ms. Alicia shared with us to use with my heart candies.  (Mommy used to use AIMS activities when she taught school.)  We also have a special heart-shaped pancake maker to use soon.  As I mentioned, though, Mommy is pacing herself these days, so maybe we'll have heart pancakes and do candy math tomorrow.  Thanks to Ms. Alicia for helping my mom!

Valentine's Day, Part 2

We celebrated part of Valentine's Day-the part for Daddy-early this year. Mommy says she needs to pace herself these days!  So, Mommy and I got up early, and here's what we did.

We put on my special shirt that we picked out to show love to Daddy, and we made heart muffins.

Here I am showing you my shirt.

And here are the mufffins.  Special thanks to Aunt Amanda, who found this muffin mold at Target for us.  Aunt Amanda is really good at finding treasures at Target.

While the muffins were baking, I gave Daddy his book and his Valentine.

And here are the yummy muffins.  I got to sprinkle red sugar on them.  Happy Valentine's Day, Daddy!

Valentine's Day, Part 1

The last time Mommy and I went to Moms Time Out, Mommy learned all about things to do for Valentine's Day.  So, we've been getting ready to show some love to Daddy.  Here's the Valentine that I made for him.  It's a whale splashing.

And here's a book we chose for him.   Special thanks to Mommy's friend, Ms. Alicia, for telling us about it.

Notice that I wrote Daddy's name on there all by myself.  And, notice that I didn't like the top of the "A" the first time, so I gave it a second top.  A is a very hard letter to make.

A Shower

I went to my first baby shower today.  (I am usually not invited, but today I was!)  Mommy, Daddy, and I knew that we were invited to eat some cake to welcome our baby into the world, even though he/she is not here yet.  But we didn't know it would be a for-real baby shower!  Here's the yummy cake.  I think I had the biggest piece of cake I have ever seen, and it had strawberries in the middle!

We were all surprised to see that Daddy's coworkers had gotten together and brought lots of gifts for our baby, in addition to having the cake.  Mommy and Daddy are really thankful.  I didn't spend a lot of time being thankful.  I crawled under the table and made friends with Daddy's coworkers and played with my trains.  Here's the best gift we got:

A shirt for me to wear after the baby comes, just in case anyone forgets who the big brother is around here.  Thanks, everyone, for my shirt.  Oh, and Mommy and Daddy say "thanks" for all the generous gifts for our baby, too!

Treehouse

I thought you might want to know how my treehouse has been doing.  You can see that lots of other animals live there now, including all my dinosaurs.  I had to play with my treehouse as soon as I got out of bed yesterday.  All the animals love having their own little places to live!

In Oklahoma

"You know how in Oklahoma there's an animal called a jaggerfy.  And if there is a lion, it has spines on its body and can roll itself up in a ball to protect itself from the dangers of somethin'."

How Crayons Are Made

Some mommies and daddies will remember this from the Sesame Street of a long time ago.

Dude

This morning, I asked Daddy how to spell "dude," and he told me, "d-u-d-e."  I told him that, actually, it was spelled "dood," since "oo" makes the "ooooo" sound.  Sometimes I know better than my silly parents.

More About This Morning

We've been a little short on pictures lately, so thank goodness for Ms. Jen who took a picture this morning!  Here, Ella and I are playing our sleepover game, but Ella is telling her mom not to take any more pictures so that we can sleep.

I should also tell you that, after being a gecko since November, I've decided that I am Lily the dog.  (Lily is Ella and Delia's dog.)  I have been barking all day.  Mommy informed me that I must not bark in the store and I needed to be named Jonathan in the store.  But other than that short break, I've been Lily, the good dog who protects our house.  It's really fun being a dog!

Mommy's 36-Week Appointment

Today was a great day for an appointment because I got to go play with Ella and Delia while Mommy saw the midwife.  I had a great time with Ella.  We played trains and pretend sleepover and play-dough.  Ella likes to do different things than I do sometimes, and I am learning that it can be really fun!  Mommy thinks it's great when Ella helps me do things I don't normally choose to do (like play-dough.)  I could have spent my whole day playing at Ella's house and I would have been perfectly happy, but Mommy did come back before too long.  Thanks so much, Ms. Jen, for hosting me!

Mommy's appointment went really well.  According to the midwife, the baby is very happy, so that made Mommy even happier.  The heartbeat sounds good, and Mommy is healthy.  And all the kicks and flips Mommy is feeling are really good signs, too.  We are thankful that God is answering our prayers and keeping our baby safe.  Oh, and there don't seem to be any indications of the baby coming very soon, so we hope everyone can be patient while our baby takes its time to grow bigger and get ready to come see us.  Thank you for being excited with us!

Saturday

We don't have any pictures, but I thought I could tell you about our day.  I've been playing Legos as much as possible, of course.  This morning, Mommy and Daddy and I met a new friend, Ms. Amber.  Ms. Amber took some family pictures of us downtown in a town near us.  She's going to give them all to us on a CD so that we can frame some and maybe blog some, too.  Mommy and Daddy took family pictures about a month before I was born, so they thought they'd do the same thing with this baby.  Of course, the pictures will be more fun this time since you can actually see me!  I had fun making friends with Ms. Amber and being goofy when I forgot to be reserved.

This afternoon, Mommy and I are resting.  Mommy is pretty tired lately.  Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa are outside doing spring cleaning in the yard.  They mowed the lawn and trimmed back the begonias so that you can see the new leaves growing, and they made room for new blossoms.  (Yes, begonias live for years and years around here...)  They're also planting some violas especially for Mommy as well as some other pretty flowers.  It's still cool, but spring is in the air here.  Our flowering pear tree in the front yard is full of buds, and some of the almond farmers already have bee hives in their orchards.  The bees must be getting excited to do their big job as soon as the almonds start blooming!

We love almond blossom time.  It's a beautiful time of year.  It has some sadness in it, because that's when Great Grandpa went to be with Jesus.  But we are hoping to have some new happiness in it, too, because it is the season for our new baby to be born.

Whatever We Get

I got my hair cut today.  We're going to have family pictures on Saturday, and my hair was getting very shaggy, so it was time to see Ms. Olivia.  Like everyone else, she asked whether our baby is a girl or boy, and which one I want.  Of course we don't know, and I want a boy.  Silly Ms. Olivia asked what would happen if our baby is a girl.  She asked if I would send a girl baby back!  I told her, "I'll love whatever baby we get."  Silly Ms. Olivia.  But I do like her...and she gives me good haircuts.

Time with Great Grandma

On Tuesday morning, we went to Great Grandma's house.  It had been too long since our last visit, and we wanted to squeeze in at least one more visit before our baby comes.  We had a great visit with Great Grandma.  She had some toys for me to play with that I hadn't seen before, and she always has interesting things for me to look at.  She and Mommy spent a lot of time looking at old pictures.  Pictures are some of Mommy's favorite things.

Great Grandma always has treasures to share with me, especially books.  Here we are reading one of them.  I really love reading with her.  Her orange tree is bursting with oranges right now, so we took some of them home, too.

After our fun time at her house, we went to lunch with Great Grandma.  Uncle Todd met us there, too.  (We didn't go to Denny's to order Grand Slams, though.  I think we would have done that if Great Grandma had known about it before we left.)  It was fun to spend that time all together.

Yesterday, we went to the airport and picked up my faraway grandma and grandpa.  They are here visiting and looking at places to live.  Right now we're playing Legos, of course.  We hope you are enjoying your day, too!

Congratulations to Nathan and Micah!

Nathan and Micah welcomed their new baby brother, Matthew Taylor, into the world this morning.  We are so excited for them!  You can see Matthew here.  Congratulations, little buddies!

More That You Should Know

This is all happening outside the mouse house.  On the left, you can see the white thing.  That's their food.  They can crawl up and out of their house to take a bite of the white mouse food.  Over on the right, the green thing is the roof to their house.  The oxygen tank is hooked to the top of their roof.  It's there in case a mouse has trouble breathing.  The mouse can breathe some oxygen that will go through a clear tube into its nose, just like grandpa.  If they run out of oxygen in the first tank, they can use the second tank.  The mice are living in their house under the green roof.

35 Weeks

Snuggle

Just So You Know...

I told Mommy, and I thought you'd want to know, too:

Fire fighters in Africa ride bikes, and they ride very fast to go fight the fires.

Uncle Jake & Aunt Laura's Movie

We are so excited about Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura's movie! If you're in Southern CA, you can buy tickets here, and if you're not, you can see the movie trailer here:

Daddy got to see their movie the last time he was with Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura, and he said it was excellent!

One More Grownup Thing

If you've been following the big story about new toy safety regulations and the effects on handmade toys and other baby items, click below to read good news!